Don’s Diary – Dissembling

A good policy, service or product should sell itself.  The punters get suspicious when there is a hard sell.  In the hard sell, popular leaders will get involved to their potential detriment.  Dissembling is considered by some in workplace advocacy to be a necessary art, those that go to Canberra, from there, never seem to lose the skills, but you do not expect to see it in Freemasonry. 

 

One trick in dissembling is if asked a question in “the general” to answer it “in the particular”, and conversely a question “in the particular” is answered in “the general”.  Others may prefer just to participate in “feather duster” interviews or have superficial audits.  Then there are briefings conducted in a manner which are designed to intimidate and discourage the hard questions being asked - the number who turn up will be instructive.  I read the message from The President of the BGP today by email, Thursday 7 June as an unusual “hard sell” and answering “in the particular”, major issues not addressed. 

 

The punters might be “thrown a few crumbs” to do something.  It may be to occupy a new premise, a common commercial real estate tactic.  They will be offered a free lease for a period, they will incur new set-up costs or recruitments, build a business or a lodge, then they will be charged an arm-and-a-leg in rental, and with their old premise gone there will be nowhere else to go. 

 

Another trick is to asset-strip and live on the capital as if it is cash flow.  If questioned, some just dissemble by saying “but this is our strategic plan” implying that they have a mandate and you are stupid for not knowing about it. 

 

Punters will be unhappy if a deficit is incurred without specific approval by the punters as debt costs the punter’s money.  Without debt would the increase in Capitation Fees be needed? 

 

On the Capitation Fee Increase Motion, some punters will be immediately put off by the socialist like so called “concessions” strategy: from the “each according to his ability, to each according to his needs (or need)”, especially then when they work out two things.  That the “concession” really means that some people will be paying more than their share and cross-subsidising, or the deficit will be increased thus costing them money.  It is an arbitrary wealth tax.  They will jack-up when they think that they are being taken for mugs and expected to believe that money grows on trees.  The punters will even jack-up even more if they have been subject to an arbitrary means test on the Capitation Fee Increase, and if they then discover that anyone, particularly senior GL officers, have been paid travel allowances from the punter’s money without a means test. 

 

They will see themselves being taken for mugs if “big government” is imposed on them in the form of head-office increases for services they have not asked for, do not need and do not want to pay for.  Without “big government” increases would the rise in Capitation Fees be needed? 

 

They will jack-up when decision making is non-transparent.  They will be lost when trust is gone or eroded. All the mob wants to do is to enjoy their lodges knowing what their taxes are being spent on, not wasted and for the exclusive benefit of Craft Lodges.

 

Yours fraternally, Don Paterson